Tuesday, April 30, 2013

So as Jesus explores
these Psalms for the strengthening of His resolve and trust in His God, and as
He continually considers what it is possible that He has been called to do and
to be for Israel, it is likely that He came to see Himself as being the one
that the Creator God will use, and do so in a very specific way, to bring about
the blessings that are promised to His God’s covenant people. Also, as
the nature of the covenant, along with the requirements that were put in place
to be a part of God’s covenant people (circumcision, reverencing the sanctuary,
keeping the Sabbath, and avoiding idolatry) are considered, it must be remembered
that Jesus, with His steps informed by His reading of the Scriptures of His
people, takes the remarkable step of re-focusing the covenant requirements upon
Himself.

Jesus declares, in no
uncertain terms (again, with this informed by His reading of Scripture), that
it is belief upon and allegiance to Him as the Creator God’s Messiah that will
be the basis for being included under that God’s covenant, and therefore the
basis for being able to experience the blessings (as spelled out in Leviticus
and Deuteronomy) to be had therein.

Because the Psalmist
connects God’s blessings with kingship (a golden crown for the head), Jesus, as
part of declaring Himself to be Israel’s Messiah, is able to make the
connection between His own Kingship, and the blessings available for the people
of the covenant. Jesus would come to believe that through His actions, along
with the response of Israel’s faithful covenant God, that He would be able to
bring about the blessings that appear in Deuteronomy. He would be able to do this because, as He
believes Himself as Messiah to be the faithful Israelite as well as the King of
Israel, He is the representative of the people as He fulfills the conditions of
the covenant that the Creator God made with Israel at Mount Sinai following the
Exodus.

Because Israel’s
messiah is more-than-clearly presented in the Scriptures as a king for all
peoples, Jesus’ re-positioning of the covenant requirements around Himself and
belief in His Gospel (Jesus is Lord), allows Him, because of His belief in the
supreme faithfulness of God that He relies upon and ultimately experiences in
His Resurrection, to extend God’s covenant blessings to all peoples. By this, the Abrahamic covenant comes to be
fulfilled as well---all peoples of the world are blessed. At the same
time, the connection to the Levitical and Deuteronomic blessings points to the ultimate
exodus of the people of the renewed covenant, as the Creator God redeems a
people for Himself, through their believing union with Jesus, from the exile
into which they had been sent, according to the Scriptural narrative, upon
Adam’s rebellion and the fall of man.

Maintaining the theme
of kingship, the Psalmist also writes, “He asked You to sustain his life, and
You have granted him long life and an enduring dynasty” (21:4). The fact
that one of the titles of the messiah was “Son of David” demonstrates the
continuity of God’s promises. Jesus, of course, is referred to on more
than one occasion as the “Son of David,” thereby reinforcing that “enduring
dynasty” that was rooted in a reliance on God’s faithfulness.

The Apostle Paul
makes this connection even more explicit, reminding his readers in Rome (and
therefore under the nose of the one who sat in the seat of power as the son of
god) that Jesus was “a descendant of David with reference to the flesh” (Romans
1:3b). As the earliest Jesus-believers
came to grips with the breadth of the implications of Jesus life, death, and
Resurrection, and as their thinking quickly lined-up with what was clearly that
of the one they followed and soon came to worship as the embodiment of the
Creator God of Israel, the whole of the New Testament would come to resound
with declarations of Jesus’ majesty and the eternal nature of His rule.

Monday, April 29, 2013

It came to be
understood that, in the Resurrection, the Creator God’s kingdom on earth was
inaugurated. Accordingly, as Jesus is
said to have prayed, His will would begin to be done on earth as it is in
heaven, specifically by and through those who would be equipped by their God
for service to His glory. Though all those so equipped would continue to
meet with the corruption that comes with living in this world that still awaits
the return of the Christ and the final consummation of the kingdom of heaven,
and though they would still go to their deaths, they would be able to live that
life while gripping on to the implied promise that just as Jesus was raised up
from the grave with a new body and a new life here in the midst of the covenant
God’s creation, having been raised with Resurrection power that serves to push
back the forces of evil here in this world, so too would they, one day, be
raised up from the grave, with a new body and a new life, here in the God of
Israel’s fully restored and renewed creation.

Jesus, above all
things, is presented as one who sought to do the will of the Father as He
understood it. He sought to be the One through Whom the Creator God would
fulfill the covenant with Abraham, and in so doing bless the world. He is
presented as one who sought to be the second Adam---to be the first truly human
being, and therefore rightly bearing the image of His Creator---that would set
all things right, regaining the dominion over the created order that had been given
to Adam. This would include reversing
the curse, through His own faithfulness together with the faithfulness of the
covenant God, that had been brought into creation by what was understood to be Adam’s
faithlessness.

He is presented as
the who sought to be the light for the world that had been His God’s intention
for His chosen people Israel, of which He was, of course, a part. With
such intentions, according to the way that He is said to have presented Himself
to the world and the way that He is presented in the stories about Him, Jesus
could certainly have been emboldened by the Psalmist’s declaration in regards
to Israel’s king that “You grant him his heart’s desire; You do not refuse his
request” (21:2).

Continuing through
these verses of the twenty-first Psalm, one finds the third verse saying: “For
You bring him rich blessings; You place a golden crown on his head” (Psalm
21:3). Whenever this mention of “blessings” is found, it is imperative to
keep the word in a context that would have been comprehensible and applicable
to those that would have been reading these writings, namely Israel in general
and members of the covenant people more specifically. Rather than just
thinking of “blessings” in vague generalities of the Creator God’s goodness and
generosity towards His people, one is obliged to more appropriately think of
blessings in terms of the Abrahamic covenant, in which the covenant God
promised to cause Abraham to exemplify divine blessing, to bless those who
blessed Abraham, and to bless all the peoples of the world through Abraham and
his descendants (Genesis 12:2-3).

Now, because the use
of “blessings” in the Abrahamic covenant could be considered to be vague, to
find a more specific statement of the “blessings” of the Hebrew/Jewish mindset
of the author of the Psalm, one would need to take into consideration the
potential blessings of their God that are directed to Israel in the first
fourteen verses of the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy (this passage expounds
on what is found in Leviticus 26). The blessings include Israel’s elevation
above all the nations of the earth (28:1), their blessings in the city and the
field (28:3), blessings for children (28:4), blessings on the produce of the
soil, livestock, herds, and flocks (28:4), blessings on basket and mixing bowl
(28:5), the blessing of enemies being struck down (28:7), blessings of the
respect of the people of the earth (28:10), blessings of rain (28:12), and
blessings of being able to lend to all while being free from debt (28:12).

This consideration
demands to be made, and readers must connect the use of “blessings” in the
Psalms with the specific ideas that were held concerning the Creator God’s
blessings, with this owing to what needs to be understood and always recognized
as the continuous, narrative structure of the Scriptures. Failing to do
so reduces the ability to understand the message of what is taken to be God’s
Word and the role of Jesus.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

O Lord, the king
rejoices in the strength You give; he takes great delight in the deliverance
You provide. – Psalm 21:1 (NET)

The first seven
verses of the twenty-first Psalm is an amazing passage of Scripture that can serve
to point directly to Jesus, the Lord of all While it is the twenty-second
Psalm generally gets far more attention for its part in directing readers to
the cross of Christ, from its opening cry of “My God, my God, why have you
abandoned me?” (22:1a), through the remainder of the Psalm that seems to point
quite explicitly to the ordeal of the cross to which Jesus would be subjected,
the twenty-first Psalm deserves similar consideration.

If Jesus could look
upon the twenty-second Psalm, seeing Himself and His messianic vocation in that
Psalm in order to gain insight into what it was that potentially awaited Him at
the end of His human journey and His revolutionary movement, then surely He
could have looked at the twenty-first Psalm as that which could have served to strengthen
Him for the purpose of taking on that mission.

Because the record of
the Gospel narratives has Jesus referring to Himself as the Son of God and the
Son of Man, which were both messianic titles that spoke, in general, of Israel,
and more specifically, of Israel’s king, it can be surmised that Jesus
understood Himself to be the long-awaited Messiah for Israel. Naturally, it would be after the event of
Resurrection that His disciples also came to understand that Jesus was the
Messiah, making sense of His previously questionable statements about Himself,
while also reversing the natural conclusions that would have been drawn
following His crucifixion, which was that He had failed in His purpose and
cause.

Because of the
messianic (kingly) sensibility, Psalms which spoke of the king of Israel could
naturally and understandably be a great source of direction, comfort, strength,
and encouragement for Jesus. As He looked forward to what it was that He
would be and do for Israel, Jesus could quite easily insert Himself into this
Psalm, trusting implicitly in the covenant God of Israel and say, “O Lord, the
king rejoices in the strength You give” (21:1a). To willingly endure the
Roman cross, which was the direction that Jesus would have known that His life
and work were taking Him, would take a great deal of strength.

With a confident
assurance in the faithfulness of the Creator God, as informed by Israel’s
history as recorded in Scripture, Jesus could stand in confident assurance in
the deliverance that His God would provide (21:1b). What would be the
appearance to be taken by that deliverance? The deliverance in which
Jesus would be able to take great delight was the assurance of the deliverance
from death. Jesus trusted that, as He took Israel’s curse upon Himself,
as Israel’s King and representative, and entered into death (exile from life),
that the covenant God of Israel, the One who promised and demonstrated faithfulness
to His people whether good or evil (depending on their response to Him), would
be faithful to deliver Him, to redeem Him from that exile by granting Him a renewed
life on the other side of the grave and of the ghastly and highly demonstrative
and definitive means that took Him there.

Of course, because the
Creator God’s Messiah was not only Israel’s King, but a King for all nations
and all peoples, when Jesus, as the Messiah, entered into death on behalf of
Israel, it could also be said that He entered into death (curse, exile) on behalf
of all mankind. If that is true, then when He was delivered from death
and its curse, so too was all mankind delivered as well, with the proof and seal
of that deliverance predicated on the response which causes an individual to believe
in Him as Lord of all. From then on, all that would come to be in union
with Christ (believing Him to be the crucified and Resurrected Lord of all),
would have gained the ultimate victory over death and its corruption.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

As a reward for their
belief in Jesus as the Son of God and the world’s true King, Master, Savior,
Leader, Ruler and more (as opposed to the Caesar, who was then afforded and
honored with those titles by those that worshiped him), large numbers of
people, because they were claiming allegiance to that different and greater
king than Caesar, were put to death. In spite of that, people continued
to believe.

Though such a
situation is bewildering to contemplate, one should not find this to be all
that surprising. The Psalmist speaks to
this, having already written, “When they hear of My exploits, they submit to
Me. Foreigners are powerless before Me; foreigners lose their courage;
they shake with fear as they leave their strongholds” (18:44-45). The
world’s powers did not know what to do with the message of Jesus. They
dealt with the challenge in the only way they knew how, which was to meet it
with the cowardice and ultimate powerlessness of the sword. As Paul would write in Colossians, though
they could certainly wield the sword, the power of their ancient stronghold had
been shaken. Those powers had been
disarmed (2:15), and they had no true and lasting power against those who
believed in this Man Who had been resurrected, or in the message of His name.

Looking to the Psalms
for strength and guidance, and considering the mortal enemies against whom He
was going to do battle, and trusting that His God was going to be completely
faithful to see Him through, Jesus could take up the Psalmist’s words of
praise, saying, “The Lord is alive! My Protector is praiseworthy!”
(18:46a) Knowing that He would, even indeed He was correct in His
estimations and successful in His mission, eventually hand all rule and all
authority on earth back over to the Father, Jesus could say, “The God Who
delivers Me is exalted as King!” (18:46b)

Facing the knowledge
of His eventual demise at the hands of Israel’s oppressors, but also the hopes
of His subsequent and expected Resurrection (according to then-current Jewish
expectation) Jesus would faithfully proclaim, “The one true God completely vindicates
Me; He makes nations submit to Me” (18:47). “Yes,” says Jesus, to the God
of Israel, in regards to death at the hands of Rome and of mankind’s curse that
began with Adam, “He delivers Me from My enemies; You snatch Me away from those
who attack Me; You rescue Me from violent men” (18:48).

Because of these
things---because of the Gospel’s proclamation that Jesus is indeed King over
all nations, because many have been and are made to believe this by the power
of the Holy Spirit, and because the Creator God works through those that have
cast their allegiance with Jesus as His instruments to establish His good in
this world as they await the return of our Lord and the final consummation of
that glorious kingdom of which they are a part at this very moment, that group
of covenant loyalists join with Jesus and declare, “So I will give You thanks
before the nations, O Lord! I will sing praises to You! He gives
His chosen King magnificent victories; He is faithful to His chosen ruler, to
David and His descendants forever” (18:49-50).

Jesus is Lord because
the Creator God is faithful. Because Jesus is Lord, death has no
power. Because He rose, all of those that rise up with Him in order to
bow down in humble service to the world, stand in defiance of death and dismiss
the fear it brings, for it is a conquered enemy and a defeated foe.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Jesus’ leadership and
authority is a dramatic component of the Gospel message (Jesus is Lord of all),
and as insisted in the writings of the Apostle Paul, the Gospel message
contains power in itself (Romans 1:16). Amazingly enough, when Jesus’ disciples
went forth and preached the Gospel message---first to Jerusalem, and then to
Judea, and Samaria, and ultimately to the farthest parts of the earth (Acts
1:8), in accordance with Jesus’ command to do so (Matthew 28:18)---it was
believed. This, in itself, is quite amazing. Though there were many myths of dying and
rising gods, a story like this was an oddity.
Who would tell the story of their king being crucified? Frankly, no one would tell a story like this,
especially if they hoped to be taken seriously.

On the surface, the
story of Jesus, which is most assuredly not to be told without the stories of
crucifixion and Resurrection, while highlighting His rejection by the vast
majority of His countrymen, lacks any semblance of power. Yes there are stories of miraculous
occurrences and the occasional large crowd, but such stories could be told of a
number of charismatic leaders. In fact,
Israel had such characters and stories in its own historical narrative. The primary elements of the story of Jesus
that was to be noised abroad (Paul would talk of preaching nothing but Christ
crucified and glorified) are defeat and a highly improbable (impossible) event. This would be an altogether unfortunate means
of gaining followers and growing a movement.

It must be understood
that there was an excellent understanding of death by crucifixion in that
day. Not only was it understood that people did not survive a Roman
crucifixion, but it was understood that the one that was crucified was
crucified for rebellion against Rome. Crucifixion was the ultimate act of
shaming, the significance of which cannot be discounted in a culture that lived
and breathed the codes of honor and shame.
Yet in telling the story of Jesus’ Lordship and power, the act of
shaming was front and center.

Along with that, a
generally held sentiment was that Israel’s messiah was to somehow throw off the
Roman yoke, perhaps by military prowess and victory. In Israel and throughout the empire, death by
means of crucifixion flatly implied that Rome had won yet another victory. Not only was it a symbolic victory over a
lone individual that was foolish enough to make himself an enemy of the Caesar,
it was a highly effective method of suppressing any continued actions by the
supporters of the one crucified. The
shame attached to crucifixion would spread beyond the cross to the associates
of the one that had suffered the fate.
In an honor and shame culture, this made crucifixion an even more
effective deterrent.

At the same time, it
was also quite well understood that people did not come back to life in bodily
form. Nevertheless, that is what the disciples preached. There were familiar ways of speaking about
phantoms and gods (or god-like men) that had risen from the underworld, but
such language was never adopted by the disciples and followers of Jesus. They not only preached a physically
resurrected and living Jesus, but against all common sense for those that
wanted to project power and the kingdom of the Creator God now established on
earth, they preached an ignominious and shameful crucifixion that had
precipitated the death from which He was physically resurrected. They
preached that this crucified (cursed) and resurrected Jew was Israel’s Messiah
and also the Lord and Ruler of all people and all things. With full understanding
of what was implied by all that had occurred, they eventually came to preach
that this Jesus was, in fact, the actual embodiment of Israel’s Creator
God. They preached all these things, and because this Gospel (Jesus is
Lord) somehow contained the power of the Creator God and conveyed it when
spoken, people actually believed it in vast numbers.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Not only was Jesus
the Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David, and King of Israel (all of these
being understood firstly as royal titles, and only secondly as having divine
implications), He is also presented as the One in whom Israel’s God Himself had
entered into history in order to vindicate His people, inaugurate His kingdom
on earth, and begin to set to rights His world that had been marred by sin (the
failures of divine image-bearers, be it Adam or Israel, to keep covenant with
the Creator God) and death’s corruption, doing so by the power of the
Resurrection, which was the power of the age to come now breaking in upon
creation (the kingdom of heaven coming to earth). This breaking in of the
Creator God’s power and plans for His creation had been foreshadowed by Jesus’
life and His miracles, but was now going to be made manifest because of His
death and what it implied and accomplished, along with the miracle of His
Resurrection.

Having been rescued
from hostile armies on both sides of the cross and raised up with all power as
a clear demonstration that He was indeed the Messiah for whom His people had
been waiting, the remainder of the eighteenth Psalm becomes even more striking
and dynamic for both Jesus and later observers. Jesus, while exploring
the possible paths upon which His vocation could take Him, could continue to
read Himself into this Psalm, speaking to the one He would have called Father (like
all members of the covenant people) and saying, “You make Me a leader of
nations; people over whom I had no authority are now My subjects”
(18:43b). Throughout the New Testament, this exaltation of Jesus as a
leader of nations is a regular theme, as has already been seen in the previous
reference to Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi.

Naturally, the theme
of Israel’s messiah as a ruler is only a recurring theme in the New Testament
because it is so prevalent in the Hebrew Scriptures. The repeated
insistence of the prophets and the Psalmist is that the messiah will be a ruler
not just for Israel, but for all peoples. Though this was routinely
misapplied both before and after Jesus’ day to mean that national Israel,
through the rule of its messiah, would also rule all nations. This would lead to an unfortunate
exclusiveness by Israel, as the covenant God’s people isolated themselves and
set up prohibitive boundaries around their God’s covenant and its associated
blessings.

This, as can be
readily gathered from Scripture, was never their God’s intention. From the outset, and especially as recorded
in the Creator God’s dealings with Abraham, all peoples were always in
view. This is made explicit in and
through Jesus and the Christ-event, the instruction that were reported to have
been given to His disciples in regards to all the world, and the ready application
of its meaning (both the instructions and the Christ-event) as recorded in the
New Testament.

Yes, Jesus Himself
makes it quite clear that He was a King for all peoples, and the Apostle Paul
seizes on the implications of Jesus’ life and actions, along with the “all
nations” presentation from the Hebrew Scriptures, to show forth that the
Creator God’s kingdom on earth (the kingdom of heaven---heaven as the realm of
the Creator God and earth as the realm of those made in His image over-lapping)
was inclusive of all peoples, in accordance with the covenant that God had made
with Abraham.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

In Jesus’ day, the
Roman cross was the symbol of Rome’s power of death over the lives of its
subjects. It was an instrument of terror
and domination. Because Israel was still
in subjection to a foreign power, they still correctly considered and
understood themselves to be in exile and under their God’s cursing. Thus, the cross, and it’s use against members
of the Jewish populace, was an incredibly stark reminder of the curse of
covenant failure.

In the twenty-eighth
chapter of Deuteronomy, for violations of His covenant with them, the Creator God
promised to His people to “raise up a distant nation against you, one from the
other side of the earth as the eagle flies” (28:49a). Now, numerous
nations had carried the eagle as a symbol, and the eagle was also the symbol of
Rome’s Senate, its people, and of imperial Rome. It is said that
approximately twenty years prior to Jesus’ birth, King Herod the Great placed
an eagle, in deference to Rome, over an entrance to the Temple. For
multiplied reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it reminded the
people of Rome’s domination (and therefore their God’s cursing) as well as
passages such as that of Deuteronomy above, this mightily offended large
numbers of the people of Israel.

So through an
understanding of the power of Rome and the cursing that was part of Israel’s
narrative that was symbolized by the cross, along with the eagle in conjunction
with Rome’s military might, as well as the Psalmist’s insistence in regards to
rescue from a hostile army, one can make a realistic analysis and
re-construction of Jesus’ mindset as He considered His role in regards to the
establishment of the kingdom of heaven, on behalf of His people and the
world.

While Jesus did not
rise up to conquer Rome (as many in His day expected of Israel’s messiah), by
being raised up from the dead after having been put to death on the Roman
cross, He was rescued from that which represented the oppressive subjection of
the world’s power, which was the cross. Not only that, it must also be
said that Jesus went directly into that which His own people saw as a
representation of being accursed by God, which was being hung on a tree (a
cross), that He traversed death in the grave, and that he came out the other
side, completely vindicated by the covenant God’s power and faithfulness.

With that vindicating
Resurrection from the grave clearly in mind, the Apostle Paul, also operating
under the influence of messianic ideas and the inspiration of the Psalms and
the prophets according to the historical narrative of the covenant people, writes
that Jesus “was appointed Son-of-God-in-power according to the Holy Spirit”
(Romans 1:4a). This title, of course, was one held by the Caesar. Paul indicates that this man, Jesus, that had
been subject to a violent and gruesome form of death in which the world’s power
clearly overcame Him in a way that was visible to all people, contrary to any
reasonable or rational way of thinking, had come out the other side of death
and was now in the position of true power.

His Resurrection from
the form of death that represented the power of death over life, showed the
world that it was Jesus, and not the Caesar, that now had the power of life
over death. This point is even more
significant when one remembers that it is made in a letter to the believers
that lived under the nose of the one looked to as the son-of-god-in-power. Among a number of other things, this improbably
Resurrection vindicated His claims as Israel’s Messiah. It is with this
in mind that Paul now insists that all that was said to be true of that messiah
throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, must now be said to be true of Jesus.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

The Apostle Paul
would latch on to this theme of kneeling, echoed elsewhere in the Hebrew
Scriptures, and include in his letter to the believers in Philippi “that at the
name of Jesus every knee will bow---in heaven and on earth and under the earth”
(2:10). Not only could Jesus come to believe that, if He was correct in
His assessment of the messianic vocation, His enemy would kneel and bow before
Him, but Jesus could also look to this Psalm and go to the cross with the
confident declaration that “You make My enemies retreat” (18:40a). With
the power of the faithful, covenant-making-and-keeping God at His back, Jesus
could make the assertion that “I destroy those who hate Me” (18:40b). Surely, the powers of death and destruction
could be understood to hate the bringers of life, renewal, restoration, and
re-creation.

His enemies would not
go down without a battle, nor without an assertion of their rights. In
fact, those enemies would cry out. The Psalmist would write, “they cry
out, but there is no one to help them” (18:41a). More than that, His
enemies, death and the grave, would even “cry out to the Lord, but He does not
answer them” (18:41b). Wait a minute. How could death cry out to
the Lord? Why would death cry out to the sovereign Lord of the cosmos?

In crying out to the
Lord, if in its own death throes as the power of resurrection life was about to
be unleashed into the world, death would be doing nothing more than asserting
its rightful claim against all of mankind. According to the narrative by
which Jesus would have ordered and defined His own life, and by which His
thinking would be shaped, that rightful claim began with Adam. More
specifically, death would be asserting its rightful claim against Israel (of
which Jesus was part), which had been in constant violation of their God’s
commandments to them, as evidenced by their ongoing experience of His promised curses and their continual state of exile, being oppressed and subjugated while
in their own land

Among a number of
reasons, it was this failure of Israel that would make it necessary, because the
covenant God is faithful to His promises, for their King to undergo that which
was seen as the greatest curse, the cross, going there as the representative of
His people, to undergo the curses of suffering and death. Though death
was certainly a usurper and an interloper in the God of Israel’s good creation,
it was not an unlawful usurpation, as death had only entered because of
mankind’s failure, and remained through the divine image-bearer’s (whether Adam
or Israel) relinquishing of his God-given dominion over all things. Though death and its associates cry out, the
Creator God’s answer would come through His anointed King’s power to “grind
them as fine windblown dust” (18:42a), and His strength to “beat them underfoot
like clay in the streets” (18:42b). This would be accomplished by a
Resurrection, as God would brook no bargains with death in the process of
setting His world to rights (and right standing with Him) through His
Christ.

As one ponders what
has been accomplished by the death and Resurrection of Jesus, and as one continues
to imagine the strength and confidence for His mission that Jesus would have
gained through His study and exploration of the Scriptures, one is able to go
on to read “You rescue Me from a hostile army” (Psalm 18:43a). For Jesus,
this involves a two-fold application. Though in the natural He was not
rescued from a hostile army---that being the Roman army---by being raised up
from His grave (which actually does indicate something of a rescue from Rome’s
military might), He was rescued from death and its vengeful hordes. By
going into the curse of death on a cross as the singular representative of His
people Israel, it can be seen that Jesus took yet another aspect of the
Deuteronomic curse upon Himself.

Monday, April 22, 2013

I chase My enemies
and catch them; I do not turn back until I wipe them out. – Psalm 18:37
(NET)

When a Jesus-believer
finds him or herself venturing into the Psalms, such should be done with an
ever-present reflection on the primary reason why one ever ventures into the
Word of God---our resurrected Lord Jesus.
Upon arriving in the Psalms, and more specifically the eighteenth Psalm,
and doing so mindful of the historical narrative of Israel and its covenant and
associated promises, one is confronted with words and thoughts that could very
well be ascribed to Jesus, and certainly reflected upon and embraced by Him, as
He tread the earthly path of ministry that was going to take Him to His
cross.

In the midst of first
century expectations concerning Israel’s messiah, and of the kingdom of God on
earth that would be established by the messiah’s victory over the enemies of the
God of Israel’s people, it is not difficult to imagine Jesus, as a would-be
messiah attempting to work out the nature of His vocation, searching the
Scriptures as He contemplated what He had come to believe was His role and His
task and His method of ushering in that long-expected kingdom.

Clearly, His
searching and reflection would have Him going about that ushering in of the
kingdom and all it would portend, in a way that stood contrary to what many of
His fellow countrymen were imagining and in some cases pursuing. The
Jesus that is presented on the pages of the Gospels is a Jesus that obviously
came to realize that the Creator God’s kingdom would not be established in the
way that every other kingdom (including Israel’s kingdom) had been established
in this world---that of the violence of sword and spear. Such was the method of the old age, and Jesus
indicates that such means had no place in the new age of Resurrection and new
creation.

At the same time,
Jesus knew that there was going to be violence, but that the violence, if it
was going to align with what He understood to be the purposes of the Creator
God for renewal and restoration, would be that which He would suffer and endure
at the hands of the Romans. Yes, Jesus knew that there was going to be a
massive conflict, and that there was an enemy to be defeated, but also realized
that the enemy with which He was going to engage in battle, was far more
ferocious and powerful than the ones that His countrymen sought to overthrow. Earthly foes and oppressors such as Rome were
merely a shadow---meager representatives and parodies of the true enemy of
creation and the divine image-bearers

Ultimately, Jesus
would realize that He was going to do mortal battle with death---that enemy
which ruled unchecked and with apparent absolute sovereignty through its power
over all men and all things at all times and all places. Jesus, relying
on His understanding of Scripture and the faithfulness of the God of Israel,
trusted that His God was going to empower and enable Him to emerge victorious
over this enemy, through a Resurrection, thereby stripping death of its
power. In its place, the Creator God,
through Jesus, would make an offer of life to all men and all things, in
submission to His Messiah.

It is with such
things in mind that Jesus could certainly return, time and again, to this Psalm
(as He hears it as an Israelite and therefore according to Israel’s defining
narrative as the covenant people of the Creator God), inserting Himself with a
growing and eventual full understanding of His vocation, reflecting on the
Roman cross to which that vocation was surely leading Him, and read “I chase My
enemies and catch them; I do not turn back until I wipe them out.” To
that could be added, “I beat them to death; they fall at My feet”
(18:38). Recognizing the source of such power, Jesus could read, “You
give Me strength for battle; You make My foes kneel before Me” (18:39).

Verse ten of the
tenth chapter of Romans chapter reads, “For with the heart one believes and
thus has righteousness and with the mouth one confesses and thus has salvation”
(10:10). Oftentimes, these two concepts are allowed to coalesce.
However, it is necessary to make a delineation and see that belief in or on Jesus
is somehow a work of the Spirit, owing to the power of the Gospel proclamation,
in which the believer is made to experience the Creator God’s covenant faithfulness
(righteousness), which is represented by the resulting fact of belief (in an
altogether incredible proposition) and its power to include the believer as
part of that God’s covenant people.

This righteousness is
most certainly not a moral quality that is given to the believer. Though one could and should become a more
moral person as a result of the righteousness (covenant inclusion, right
standing). The proclamation of submission to the claims of the
Gospel---the open confession of Jesus as Lord (a highly-charged and risky
proposition in the day in which Caesar himself is declared to be Lord, with
claims contrary to this being punishable by death), and a life live in line
with the proclamation, is what breaks the curse of Adam (death) and ends the
exile from pure fellowship with one’s Creator. That is salvation, and it
is distinct from righteousness.

So how does one know
that the Apostle Paul is addressing the divisions and claims of Jew and Gentile
as he writes of belief, righteousness, and salvation? Paul appears to go
on to make this quite clear in verse twelve, writing that “there is no
distinction between the Jew and the Greek” (10:12a). It would be
difficult to be more clear than that. He goes on to write, “for the same
Lord is Lord of all, Who richly blesses all who call on Him” (10:12b).

One cannot lightly
dismiss or skim over Paul’s repeated use of “all” throughout the letters that
are attributed to him, as it is highly significant for his worldview and opinion
concerning the reach and purpose of the Gospel.
Additionally, with his use of “richly blesses,” Paul seems to be making what
should be considered to be an unmistakable allusion to the Abrahamic covenant
(which would also pass through Isaac and Jacob, on to Israel).

Before bringing this
study to an end, it is worthwhile to pay a quick visit to the words of that
covenant, as one turns to Genesis to read, “I will make you into a great
nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, so that you will
exemplify divine blessing. I will bless those who bless you, but the one
who treats you lightly I must curse, and all the families of the earth will
bless one another by your name” (12:2-3).
The rich blessing of the covenant God is a key component to the
worldview of the covenant people.

Yes, by calling on the name of the Lord---by
believing in Jesus as Lord and confessing Him as such, the blessings of Abraham
would fall to all, both Jew and Gentiles, with no distinction. Paul is
desperate to make it clear that without boundary or work of the law or division
or claim to superiority or inferiority, “everyone who calls on the name of the
Lord will be saved” (10:13).

Sunday, April 21, 2013

In that day (the time
of Jesus and Paul), these marks of the covenant people would be generally referred
to as the “works of the law.” Their
purpose was to mark them off from the Gentile nations that stood against Israel,
and therefore, according to the way of thinking maintained by the larger part
of the people of Israel, did not deserve their God’s blessings. Paul
insists that with this way of thinking, Israel did was not submitting to the
Creator God’s plan of covenant faithfulness, which was that all peoples would
be blessed through His chosen people, beginning with Abraham, with whom the
covenant had originally been struck.

Rounding out this
line of thinking, Paul then writes, “For Christ is the end of the law, with the
result that there is righteousness for everyone who believes” (10:4).
What the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ would accomplish would be the
tearing down of those boundaries of the “works of the law” (circumcision, food
laws, Sabbath-keeping). Having torn those things down, He would set up in
their place, a new standard for entering in to the blessings of the Creator God’s
covenant faithfulness. That way of
entering into the covenant, and so being able to share the blessings (as
outlined by Israel’s self-defining narrative), would be that of believing upon Jesus
as Lord.

As one reads through
this letter to the Romans, it must be continually borne in mind that Paul is
writing to a mixed group of both Jews and Gentiles. There would have been
a faction of the Jews, as is to be found repeatedly throughout the New
Testament, that did not want to see the Gentiles come under the blessings of their
God’s covenant. There would have been a faction that would have insisted
that Gentiles, in order to truly be a part of the Creator God’s covenant
people, would need to undergo circumcision, and along with that, would need to diligently
keep to the prevailing dietary restrictions and Sabbath laws.

In addition to those
factions of Jews (who could certainly be counted as committed Jesus-believers),
there would have been Gentiles (also Jesus-believers) that held to the thought
that the covenant blessings had passed completely from the Jews to the
Gentiles, as they could point to Israel’s nearly wholesale rejection of Jesus
as Messiah as evidence in favor of such a verdict. One could presume that
these various factions could have eyed each other suspiciously, seeking to draw
boundaries where none should rightfully be allowed to exist, and Paul can be
seen dealing with these things throughout this letter.

Thus, Paul’s talk of “righteousness
for everyone who believes” (right standing in the covenant and access to the covenant
faithfulness of the Creator God) also serves to address any Jewish
provincialism, along with Gentile high-mindedness, as Paul makes it a point to
inform them that all can be saved. The
implication that all can be saved would also seem to imply that all need to be
saved, which further implies that all, Jew and Gentile, are in the midst of
cursing and exile and in need of salvation from such. For the Jew, the
curse and exile was associated with their violations of the law delivered to
them through Moses. For the Gentile, if one considers the whole of the
Scriptural narrative, the cursing and exile would go all the way back to Adam, and
his purported actions that resulted in the bringing of the curse of death and
exile from God’s presence into the creation (which would naturally apply to the
Jew as well).

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Not only were there
many in Israel that were expecting their messiah to accomplish the overthrow of
the subjecting Romans, but many of those that harbored that expectation also expected
that the messiah, with the sovereign power of the covenant God of Israel at his
back, would subjugate all nations (Gentiles) to them as the covenant people.
For many (though not all), this was a zealously held position. However, it would turn out that this was not at
all in line with the revealed truth (using Paul’s language) that the Creator God
intended to bring all nations, both Jew and Gentile, into a single covenant
family under the rule of His Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.

As Jesus would come
to demonstrate, the creation and construction of this worldwide family (a global
empire) was not going to be accomplished through a zealous taking up of arms,
but rather, through a laying down of nationalistic claims and aspirations, and
the embracing of an entirely different kingdom ethic.

The Apostle Paul cuts
right across all of these Jew versus Gentile issues, getting directly to the
heart of the matter when he writes, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus
is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will
be saved” (Romans 10:9). That’s it! This salvation, which must be
understood in accordance with and according to Israel’s covenant narrative, was
for Jew and Gentile alike. Salvation, as
understood by the covenant people, was not to be the exclusive domain of Israel
alone.

Restricting
considerations to this letter to Rome, it can be insisted this was “the word of
faith” (10:8) that Paul said was his singular message, and this can be
demonstrated to be true, as effectively, verse nine outlines the message of the
Gospel (Jesus is Lord). Belief in this Gospel, as ridiculous as the claim
may be in light of the crucifixion (which would indicate the failure of a
messiah figure) and a supposed resurrection (it was a well known and readily
accepted fact that people do not simply come back from the dead), and
submission to its strange power that would serve to make it possible to order
one’s life according to the Creator God’s purposes, was that which would graft
(to use terminology from chapter nine) an individual into the grouping of the
Creator God’s covenant people, and allow that person to experience the
blessings associated with being a member of the covenant people (as addressed
to Abraham, as outlined in Israel’s historical narrative, as expounded upon by
Jesus Himself, and as would have been understood at the time by Paul).

The next verse
follows in the same vein, as Paul goes on to write: “For ignoring the
righteousness that comes from God, and seeking instead to establish their own
righteousness, they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (10:3). Paul
says that they ignored the covenant God’s righteousness. That is, they ignored their God’s covenant
faithfulness to His oft-stated desire to draw all nations to worship Him
because of and as a result of the knowledge of Him and the light of His glory
that they would be able to see and experience in and through His people
Israel. Rather, Paul insists, they sought to establish themselves as the
separate and autonomous people of their own separate God, setting up strict and
un-breachable boundaries of covenant markers such as circumcision,
Sabbath-keeping, and food-laws, that would serve to identify them as the
Creator God’s chosen people, and therefore as the exclusive recipients of the
benefits to be had from allegiance to Him.

Friday, April 19, 2013

For everyone who
calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. – Romans 10:13 (NET)

A great hope for the
believer. A great comfort to those that previously stood outside of
covenant with the Creator God. It is certainly an oft-quoted statement,
but regularly and almost exclusively set forth with a complete lack of
context. Regularly, and certainly without any type of malicious intent
(one would hope), this verse is lifted from its setting here in the tenth
chapter of Romans and made to serve duty as part of a statement regarding
nothing more than a personal salvation, with the concept therein expressed
presented as something of a free-floating aphorism.

It is a duty for
which the statement is ill-equipped, especially when one is made to consider
that the personal salvation with which it is always associated is a salvation
of the soul, so as to enable a believer to “go to heaven” when he or she passes
from this life. Unfortunately, such a presentation and way of viewing the
saving that is associated with calling on the name of the Lord, falls well
short of the message of the Gospel (Jesus is Lord). So while these words
do represent a great hope, putting them in their proper context serves to make
the hope even greater, as it demonstrates the covenant faithfulness of the
Creator God.

Throughout chapters nine
and ten of Romans, the Apostle Paul spills a fair amount of ink in writing about
his national brethren, the Jews. This ongoing dissertation concerning the
Jews provides the context for verse thirteen of chapter ten, as well as what
comes before and after. After outlining Israel’s rejection of the Gospel
message (Jesus is the crucified and resurrected Messiah of Israel and Lord of
all creation) in the ninth chapter, Paul begins the tenth chapter (though, of
course, Paul had no conception of chapter and verse in the composition of his
letters to believers) by writing, “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and
prayer to God on behalf of my fellow Israelites is for their salvation” (10:1).
It was well understood that, until the messiah came---until the covenant God of
Israel personally acted within history to deliver His people from oppression
and exile---that Israel was still under their God’s curse, while continuing to
live and labor and experience the exile that began with the Babylonian conquest
of Judah in 586 B.C.

The coming of
messiah, their acknowledgment of their God’s faithful fulfillment of His
promise in the sending of that messiah (or perhaps coming to His people and
returning to His Temple in the person of the messiah), along and their
submission to the claims of that messiah and his lordship, would signal
Israel’s salvation. This did not mean that members of the nation of Israel
could now go to heaven when they died, and this way of thinking would be quite
foreign to a member of the covenant people.
What Israel’s salvation signaled was that Israel would be delivered from
the curse of separation from their God, with their long exile from fellowship
with Him brought to an end, and their subjection to foreign powers
discontinued. That is an extraordinarily large part of what it would mean
for Israel to be saved.

To the words of the
first verse, Paul adds, “For I can testify that they are zealous for God, but
their zeal is not in line with the truth” (10:2). What was the truth?
In Paul’s estimation, the truth was that the Creator God had sent His
Messiah, that being Jesus, to His people, but that He had been rejected.
By rejecting Jesus, it was surmised that they also rejected the model for the
inauguration of the kingdom of God that Jesus had presented to them, and which
was now being espoused by those that continued to look to Him as Messiah, who believed
Him to be and now worshiped Him as the incarnation of the Creator God, and who
were convinced that the long-awaited kingdom of God had been inaugurated and
brought to bear on earth via His death and Resurrection. Contrary to this, many in Israel believed
that the kingdom of God---the kingdom of heaven---would have to be ushered in
through the overthrow of those who oppressed them, that being the Romans.
They were zealous for this. As Paul
insists, this zeal was not in line with the truth.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

However, the
historical narrative of Scripture, as carried forward from the Hebrew
Scriptures into the Gospels, tells a story in which the covenant God was in
complete control and quite faithful to His promises. When the four
hundred ninety years were fully complete, as the Creator God saw it, then His
covenant people would have their King. They would have the shepherd to
whom the prophet Zechariah pointed.

Interestingly enough,
this was not the first time that the Creator God’s people had waited four
hundred ninety years for their King. This was not the first time that,
though they were in their promised land, they were not autonomous. It
would not only have been in Nehemiah’s day that the people could have said of
their land, “Its abundant produce goes to the kings you have placed over us due
to our sins…and we are in great distress!” This was not the first time
that the people could have said “today we are slaves,” as they looked forward
to a King, and a shepherd to lead them.

In the book of Acts,
the Apostle Paul makes a speech in which he says that “The God of this people
Israel chose our ancestors and made the people great during their stay as
foreigners in the country of Egypt (ruled by a foreign power), and with
uplifted arm He led them out of it. For a period of about forty years He
put up with them in the wilderness. After He had destroyed seven nations
in the land of Canaan, He gave His people their land as an inheritance”
(13:17-19).

For Paul and others,
this could easily be made to correspond to the history of the remnants of Judah
(the families of those that had been exiled to Babylon) returning under God’s
direction, from Babylon to Jerusalem, to rebuild the Temple in their
land. What does Paul add to this? He says, “All this took about
four hundred fifty years” (13:20a). Four hundred fifty years is not quite
four hundred ninety years, but one must continue so as to get the full effect,
the revelation of the mindset of the earliest believers, and the connection to
Jesus.

According to Luke,
Paul goes on to say “After this He gave them judges until the time of
Samuel the prophet” (13:20b), in which the Creator God’s people would be ruled
by an alternating series of foreign powers, which would be not at all unlike
the period of time from Daniel to Jesus (as the land and the people were ruled
by an alternating series of foreign powers).
Continuing, the Apostle offers the reminder that “Then they asked for a
king, and God gave them Saul son of Kish, a man from the tribe of Benjamin, who
ruled forty years” (13:20c-21).

Four hundred fifty
years, plus forty years, is four hundred ninety years. What happened
next? “After removing him, God raised up David their king. He
testified about him: ‘I have found David the son of Jesse to be a man after My
heart, who will accomplish everything I want him to do’.” (13:22)
According to the popular narrative, David was the first shepherd-king of the
Creator God’s people. Paul, fully aware of the importance of the four
hundred ninety years of Daniel and its presentation of the coming of the
messiah (the Son of David---a royal term packed with significance), constructs
a narrative in which David himself is given to Israel after a period of four
hundred ninety years. Upon doing that, Paul immediately turns his
thoughts to Jesus the Messiah, saying that “From the descendants of this man
God brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, just as He promised” (13:23). It
is likely that Jesus, in Paul’s was of thinking, was the greater
Shepherd-King.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Seventy weeks have
been determined concerning your people and your holy city to put an end to
rebellion, to bring sin to completion, to atone for iniquity, to bring in
perpetual righteousness, to seal up the prophetic vision, and to anoint a most
holy place. – Daniel 9:24 (NET

This was popularly
understood to be seventy weeks of years, or four hundred ninety years.
Further information about the significance of this period of time is provided
in the following verse, which says, “So know and understand: From the issuing
of the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until an anointed one, a prince
arrives, there will be a period of seven weeks and sixty two weeks”
(9:25a). This apparently served to color the expectation of the people in
the days of Jesus. At the time in which Jesus lived, the four hundred
ninety year period, as many saw it, had been completed, and a great many of the
people, partially owing to the ongoing subjection to Rome, were looking for
their “anointed one,” their “prince,” their messiah” to appear.

Over five hundred
years prior to the time of Jesus, groups of people had returned to the land of
Israel and the area of Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra, with this
coinciding with the decree from Cyrus, the king of Persia, to rebuild the
Temple in Jerusalem. Though there had been a return to their land of
promise, because the people were still under the rule of a foreign power, the
people of the Creator God people did not yet consider themselves to have fully
and truly exodused from the state of exile. Rather, a popular conception amongst
the people was that they remained under the promised curses of their faithful,
covenant God.

Due to subsequent
rule by Greece, Egypt, Rome, and others, this popular mindset would persist
through Jesus’ day. In the days of Nehemiah, though they lived in their
land, the people readily confessed that “today we are slaves! In the very
land You gave to our ancestors to eat its fruit and to enjoy its good
things---we are slaves. Its abundant produce goes to the kings you have placed
over us due to our sins. They rule over our bodies and our livestock as
they see fit, and we are in great distress!” (Nehemiah 9:36-37) This
self-understanding is also reflected in the book of Ezra. This way of comprehending their position
lined up with the curses of Leviticus and Deuteronomy that were associated with
the Creator God’s covenant with His people.

So though they lived
in (and many possessed ownership of) their own land, Israel waited for its messiah. A number of potential messiahs came and went,
with one failure after another. As Daniel’s four hundred ninety year
period began to draw to a completion, something of a fever pitch was created amongst
the people. Many insisted that their God, if He was indeed as faithful as
He was believed to be, had to act according to His promises. It must be remembered that the promises of
their God, in accordance with the covenant, coupled with the dramatic display
of the exodus that was such an important part of the way that Israel defined
itself, were part and parcel of the way that members of the nation of Israel
looked upon the world.

This way of thinking
concerning the way that the promises were to come to fruition, and especially
the messianic way that those promises were viewed through the lens of prophets
such as Isaiah, produced a substantial number of messianic movements, a great
deal of high-minded words, a substantial amount of activity on behalf of more
than a few well-intentioned (for the most part) members of the covenant people
to establish themselves as the messiah, and ultimately many empty and futile
claims.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

What the Creator God is
presumed to have said to Judah through Jeremiah, the same God effectively and
presumably said to Adam, which was “Obey me and carry out the terms of the
agreement exactly as I commanded you. If you do, you will be My people
and I will be your God” (Jeremiah 11:4b). Had Adam been faithful to the
covenant conditions that had been delivered to him, death would not have come
upon him and (again, presumably) the creation over which he was given
dominion.

The Scriptural
narrative suggests that Eden and the covenant God’s creation would have
remained in the state of perfection in which it was delivered to man. If
His chosen people were faithful, Israel’s God promised to “keep the promise I
swore on oath to your ancestors to give them a land flowing with milk and
honey” (11:5a). “Milk and honey” could certainly also be rendered as
“fertile fields and fine pastures,” which could also serve as a description of
the land into which man had been placed before the curse of his covenant failure
caused it to be overrun with thorns and thistles.

It is possible to
hear the Creator God not only speaking to the people of Judah, but to all that
would eventually come to be His covenant people, as He says, “I solemnly warned
your ancestors (Israel & Adam respectively) to obey Me. I warned them
again and again, every since I delivered the out of Egypt until this very day”
(11:7). Obviously, Adam was not personally delivered out of Egypt, though
He was placed, as Israel would eventually be, in a land of the Creator God’s
choosing.

The described paths
of Adam and Israel converge again, as one reads “But they did not listen to Me
or pay any attention to Me!” (11:8a). Clearly, this could be said of both,
which lends credence to seeing Adam as the embodiment of Israel in the creation
narrative. “Each one of them,” the Creator God says, “followed the
stubborn inclinations of his own wicked heart. So I brought on them all
the punishments threatened in the covenant because they did not carry out its
terms as I commanded them to do” (11:8b).

For His covenant
people, the punishment was the curse that Jeremiah insisted was on its way; and
for Adam and all of humankind, the punishment was death. Why?
Because the Creator God is faithful to His covenants, even if and when those
that are charged to be His image-bearers are not. The Creator God of
Israel demanded and expected trust, but the story of Scripture indicates that
He did not receive it. He expected these creatures that had been made in
His image to reflect His glory, but they failed.

For Israel and for
Adam (and all the descendants of Adam), it could be said, “The people of Judah
and the citizens of Jerusalem have plotted rebellion against Me… They too
have paid allegiance to other gods and worshiped them” (11:9,10b). Both
rebelled and, for all practical purposes, fell into idolatry. Israel
found itself bowing to the gods of the surrounding nations, whether by choice
or through force, whereas Adam, beginning the idolatry with which each of his
progeny (according to the Scriptures) is afflicted, seems to have bowed down to
and worshiped himself, making himself the measure of all things, in trustful
worship of the creature rather than the Creator. The sovereign Lord’s
response to this is consistent, as He says, “those gods will by no means be
able to save them when disaster strikes them” (11:12b). A redeemer would
be necessary.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Tell them that the
Lord, the God of Israel, says, “Anyone who does not keep the terms of the
covenant will be under a curse.” – Jeremiah 11:3 (NET)

So it was for the
people of the Creator God, Israel (specifically those of the southern kingdom
of Judah in the time of Jeremiah). The curses under which they would find
themselves are presented with utmost clarity in the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy
(expounding on the Levitical curses). Because Jeremiah is speaking on the
coming destruction of Jerusalem and subjugation of Judah by the Babylonians,
and because such subjugation and oppression can be located within the extensive
list of curses that Israel’s God had promised to bring upon His covenant people
if they did not keep the terms of the covenant, it can be reliably affirmed
that the Creator God’s people had not kept to the terms of the covenant.

More specifically, the
covenant people had not lived up to their responsibility to properly bear the
divine image, as set forth in the laws that were understood to have been
provided to them by their God, through Moses. To Judah in Jeremiah’s day,
in reference to the terms of the covenant and its curses, the Creator God said,
“Those are the terms that I charged your ancestors to keep when I brought them
out of Egypt, that place which was like an iron-smelting furnace” (11:4a).

However, it would
behoove later observers not to look down upon them or speak poorly of them
because of this. The covenant people were unable to keep the terms of the
covenant because they were human, and therefore, as the story of Scripture
seems to be supposed to be understood, subject to the same failings to be found
in the head of the entire race, that being Adam. The covenant that Israel
violated was not the first covenant to be violated. They were not the
first to find failure when it came to the Creator God’s expectations. To
find that occurrence, one must look to the book of Genesis, remembering that
the Genesis narrative is crucial for the self-identification and
self-understanding of the people of Israel.

There one is able to read
that “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the orchard in Eden to care
for it and to maintain it” (Genesis 2:15). This care and maintenance was
a portion of the Creator God’s covenant with the being that had been created in
His image. Reading on, one also finds
it said that “You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard, but you
must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat
from it you will surely die” (2:16-17). Of course, owing to the knowledge
of pain and suffering, information about which provides a daily bombardment of
the sense, all are quite aware that the terms of this covenant were violated.

Again, as the
Scriptural narrative seems to insist, owing to that violation, because the
Creator God is faithful to His covenants, all of humanity and creation came
under a curse, as death is said to have made its entry into the world.
The curse came upon the good creation of the covenant God for the same reason
that the curse came upon that same God’s people, Israel. Terms of the
covenant were not kept.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Therefore, do
Christians, recognizing that they are living in a world in which the Creator God’s
kingdom on earth has been inaugurated and where Jesus reigns as King over all of
this creation that began to be renewed and re-made and set to rights with His Resurrection, oppress foreigners who live in their land? It may seem like
a strange question, because so many Christians are so accustomed to speaking
and thinking in terms of being persecuted for faith or hated by the
world. One has to remember that in Judah (and all Israel), foreigners in
their land would have been those that were not members of the Creator God’s
covenant people. Likewise, let us consider that believers, before being
brought to the place of belief through the activity of the Holy Spirit as
exercised through the power of the proclaimed Gospel of Jesus, could certainly
be looked upon as foreigners in the midst of the Creator God’s kingdom on
earth.

If that is understood,
then the believer must also consider how they find themselves treating those
that currently stand outside of the Creator God’s covenant that is marked by
belief in Jesus as the Messiah and Ruler of all things? Are they
oppressed? How are they oppressed? Is it not the case that
believers are the ones that are oppressed? In a sense, yes, but in the
end, believers stand with and serve the One that is King of all, with all
rulers subjected to Him. So rather than being the oppressed ones, believers
actually find themselves, like Israel, in the place in which they can become
the oppressor, inviting judgment.

So again, how can believers
oppress foreigners---those outside the covenant. Well, are they shunned?
Does the believers think him or herself better than those that are not inside
the covenant through belief in Jesus? Do believers isolate themselves
from non-believers? Do they separate themselves from who and what they
speak of as “the world,” and by doing so, think that they are living holy and
righteous lives that are pleasing to God? Do they merely shine as lights
for each other, while leaving the “foreigners” groping about in an oppressive
and chaotic darkness? Do they judge and condemn them for engaging in
those things that are subjectively labeled as “sin,” and “preach” against “sin”
rather than being the lights of God’s intention by preaching in word and in
deed the message of the Gospel (Jesus is Lord), and so find themselves possibly
engaging in what it is that their God finds far more heinous and deserving of
His curse?

In addition, the
covenant God says to stop oppressing “children who have lost their fathers, and
women who have lost their husbands” (7:6b). The covenant God’s people had
an obligation to orphans and widows. Not caring for them was the same as
oppressing them. In the midst of all of the worthwhile endeavors in
ministry as the renewed Israel in Christ, that is, the Creator God’s
re-constituted covenant people, it’s worth asking how believers are doing in
this regard? Along with the directive concerning the oppression of
foreigners, orphans, and widows, the Creator God says, “Stop killing innocent
people in this land. Stop paying allegiance to other gods” (7:6c). The
Creator God says that all of these things “will only bring about your ruin”
(7:6d).

Believers are always
quick to emphasize the idolatry of the covenant God’s people that brought
judgment to Israel and Judah, but it comes last in this listing of offenses
against their God that will bring ruin and exile. Idolatry would
naturally grow out of the oppressions here recounted and the killing of
innocent people, because forsaking that which was their God’s purpose for them,
that God’s people would be determined to find a god in whose image they could
actually believe themselves to have been made, and who would sanction their
oppression.

The Creator God’s
message to His people is “If you stop doing these things, I will allow you to
continue to live in this land which I gave to your ancestors as a lasting
possession” (7:7). If Jesus-followers, as people under the covenant of
belief in the Gospel (Jesus, the crucified and resurrected man from Nazareth is
Israel’s Messiah and Lord of all creation) desire to have a continued place in
God’s kingdom on earth---in the land that He has given to His image-bearers and
wise stewards as a lasting possession---then this passage from Jeremiah should
serve as a clarion call to the duties of their vocation. Is there a need
to change some ways and to start doing what is
right?

Friday, April 12, 2013

This second time that
the Creator God speaks to His people about changing their ways and doing what
is right, follows the mocking repetition of the high-mindedness of the people,
in thinking that they were safe from judgment, because they could simply say,
“The temple of the Lord is here! The temple of the Lord is here!
The temple of the Lord is here!” (Jeremiah 7:4b).

Why would they say
that? To answer that, one must understand the purpose that the temple
served. Along with being a reminder and representation of their God, of
the tabernacle of the wilderness, and therefore of their redeeming exodus from
Egypt at the hands of their covenant-making-and-keeping God, the temple was the
place where the covenant people could go for the purpose of offering sacrifices
for transgressions of the provisions of the law. It was central to the life of Israel and served
an extremely important role.

Members of the
covenant people could go to the temple, and through offering the requisite
sacrifices prescribed under the law, receive atonement for their covenant
failures. In that day, the Creator God’s people relied upon this
aspect of the temple every bit as much as the Creator God’s people, in this
day, rely upon the sacrifice of the Christ to provide the necessary atonement
for transgressions that represent their failures to be the divine image and
light bearers that the Creator God intends His people to be.

So when the Creator
God directs His people to change their ways, it needs to be determined what it
is that they are doing that needs to be changed. When God instructs them
to do what is right, to what is He referring as their actions that are wrong in
His sight? What are His people doing that has their God looking upon
those things and saying, “If you keep doing these things, I am going to bring
My promised curses and send you into exile away from the land that I have given
to you”?

After imploring them
to treat others as they would want to be treated, the covenant God gives a list
of those things that are severely offending Him. Having been so long
steeped in a Christian culture that highlights certain types of “sins” (sex,
drugs, alcohol, etc…), one might register a bit of surprise to hear the Creator
God speak through His prophet and draw attention to that which offends Him most
by saying “Stop oppressing foreigners who live in your land” (7:6a). Apparently,
the Creator God’s people had forgotten that they had been foreigners in the
land of Egypt. They had forgotten their previous exile from the land that
had been given to Abraham. They had forgotten their exodus. They
had forgotten Who it was that was represented by the temple, and from Whom they
were seeking their atonement.

The oppression of
foreigners in the land of Judah is such an interesting phenomenon, not only in
that it demonstrated such a tremendous amount of forgetfulness on the part of
God’s people, but also because it seems that a great many Christians think that
this does not really apply to them, primarily because of the unfortunate (and
anti-Scriptural) long-held tendency, insisted upon by so many erstwhile and
well-meaning preachers of the Gospel, for Christians to think of themselves as
foreigners---as strangers in a strange land (the mindset of “this world is not
my home, I’m just passing through”).

However, if the body
of Jesus believers represents a renewed Israel, then it is incumbent upon that
group to recognize that they are not the foreigners. They are not the
strangers. As those that represent the kingdom of the sovereign God of
the universe, and as harbingers of the renewed creation that is and will be brought
to bear in this world, they are those that ultimately possess the land and are
actually the ones in the position to be potential oppressors. They are
living in a world that began to be re-claimed two thousand years ago, serving
as kings and priests to the most High God, through their believing union with
the Christ.

The Lord God of
Israel Who rules over all says: Change the way you have been living and do what
is right. If you do, I will allow you to continue to live in this land.–
Jeremiah 7:3 (NET)

As the prophet
Jeremiah is still in the early stages of his proclamation concerning the
destruction and desolation and exile that is to come upon Judah because they
have failed to be what their God intended them to be, he passes along the
instruction, from God, that His covenant people must “change the way” that they
“have been living,” and to that end, must “do what is right.” The Creator
God tells them that, if they do so, then He will allow them to continue to live
in the land.

By speaking of the
land, and such an allowance, the covenant God is attempting to bring His people
to the point of remembrance of perhaps the most significant component of the
curses that had been presented to them in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that would
result from their not being faithful to the covenant into which they had been
brought by their God. Because the promise to their progenitor, Abraham,
included the promise of a land, and because the defining moment of their
history was the exodus event that would allow them to return to that land
promised to their forefather, the greatest of all of the curses that were on
offer from their God was the curse of being driven from their land and
subjected to foreign oppressors, in exile from the land of their
heritage.

Along with those
warnings rooted in their historical narrative and their own self-understanding,
the people of Judah would have had ready access to the extraordinarily vivid
reminder of what had transpired in the not-too-distant history of their
northern neighbor, Israel. More than a century earlier, Israel (the
northern kingdom of the divided kingdom) had been conquered by Assyria and
removed from their land of covenantal promise.

The Creator God’s
curse had come upon the northern kingdom, and exile had ensued. It would be none too difficult for Judah to
equate the exile with the promised curses, as did the prophets of Israel, and
adapt accordingly. That group of
people had been scattered to the winds, never to be re-constituted in the form
of the ten tribes that had composed the nation. As seems to be the case,
the warnings had come to Israel through their prophets just as warnings were
now coming to Judah. Repeatedly, Israel had been directed to change their
way of living and to do what was right. Because they did not, the
covenant God faithfully executed His solemn, covenant promises by not allowing
them to continue living in their land.

The Creator God can
be heard repeating Himself in the fifth verse of this chapter, where the reader
finds “You must change the way you have been living and do what is right” (7:5a).
That’s twice in the span of just three verses, so clearly attention is being
drawn to the covenant-violating actions of the people. To that is added “You must treat one another
fairly” (7:5b). Now, because fairness is often taken to be such a
personally subjective and eminently fluid concept, a right understanding is
probably best served by perceiving this insistence on fairness as something
more along the lines of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto
you.”

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Through the
Resurrection and its power that brought to birth these sons of the kingdom, the
Creator God says through Isaiah that “I am coming to gather all the nations and
ethnic groups; they will come and witness My splendor” (66:18b). These
nations and ethnic groups, presumptively, will be gathered by the preaching of
the Gospel (Jesus is Lord), and by the apparent pure power that is contained in
the act of preaching (in word and deed).

With an understanding
of the prophetic literature and the scope of the Scriptural narrative, it seems
that Jesus had come to an understanding of the idea that the kingdom that had
been promised to the Creator God’s Messiah (Israel’s King, Son of God) would
require His own crucifixion, and that afterwards, had been inaugurated by His
Resurrection. It would appear that it is for this reason, reflecting on His
understanding of Daniel (and others), that He would come to insist that “All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me” (Matthew 28:18b), before
setting His disciples on their global kingdom path.

Because it seems that
Jesus understood that it was the goal of the Creator God, Israel’s purpose as
the covenant people of that God, His purpose as the embodiment of Israel (as
the King of Israel represents the whole of the people), and the purpose of the
renewed Israel that would be brought into covenant through belief in Him as their
Lord and King, for the purpose of gathering all nations and ethnic groups to
witness the splendor of that Creator God, He added, “go and make disciples of
all nations” (28:19a). The general understanding of those that believed
in Jesus as their Lord and King was that the making of disciples would come
about through the Holy Spirit’s application of the power of the Resurrection to
hearts and minds, gifting faith to believe what, on the surface, was a wholly
incredible thing.

Furthermore, through
Isaiah the Creator God communicates to His people, saying “I will perform a
mighty act among them and then send some of those who remain to the nations…
and to the distant coastlands that have not heard about Me or seen My splendor”
(66:19a,c). Turning to the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, one is able
to read about Jesus telling His disciples “But you will receive power when the
Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and
in all Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest parts of the earth” (1:8).
Reading on a little bit farther, one finds “when the day of Pentecost had
come, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like a
violent wind blowing came from heaven and filled the entire house where they
were sitting… All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit” (2:1-2, 4a).

With this mighty act,
the firstborn of those long-awaited sons of Zion received that power that would
enable them to begin taking the message of the Gospel of Jesus to the nations
and to the distant coastlands, thereby revealing the splendor and the majesty
and the faithfulness of the Creator God. Through Isaiah, that God said
that this new country, this new nation, these sons of Zion “will tell the
nations of My splendor” (66:19d). Indeed,
they did, have, and are doing that very thing, empowered by the Spirit, as a
nation under the rule of a resurrected and exalted Lord.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Can a country be
brought forth in one day? Can a nation be born in a single moment? –
Isaiah 66:8b (NET)

The answer to this
question, posed by the prophet Isaiah, is yes. A country can be brought
forth in one day, and indeed, a nation can be born in a single moment. This is especially so if that day and that
moment is the Resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, from the grave,
with the birth of a nation (a kingdom, an empire) without borders, encompassing
the entire globe. In his proleptic vision of a world in which Israel’s
God rules without challenge (though certainly post-Christ-event observers read
messianic events back into the text), Isaiah writes, “Yet as soon as Zion goes
into labor she gives birth to sons!” (66:8c) Zion, in popular prophetic
language, is the Lord’s mountain, often serving as the purported location of
the New Jerusalem, of which it is said, “Be happy for Jerusalem and rejoice
with her, all you who love her!” (66:10a)

With what appears to
be a nod to the sixty-sixth chapter of Isaiah, the author of the letter to the
Hebrews pens, “But you have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the assembly and congregation
of the firstborn, who are enrolled in heaven” (12:22-23a). Let it be said
that the language of “Zion,” while also standing in for a physical location, is
the language of the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of heaven that will be
enlarged by the Gospel proclamation that Jesus is Lord of all, is that which
was inaugurated and unleashed upon the earth as a kingdom without end at the
Resurrection of Jesus.

In the book of
Revelation, which possesses its own vision of the presence of the kingdom of
heaven and which rests upon the same over-arching Scriptural narrative on which
rests Isaiah and the letter to the Hebrews, the heavenly Jerusalem comes to
earth. One recognizes the influence of
the Isaianic vision there as well, as the believing community continued to draw
from the narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures in their attempt to understand the
work of the Christ and its implications, in the Creator God’s declaration that
“just as the new heavens and the new earth I am about to make will remain standing
before Me…so your descendants and your name will remain”(66:22). That new
heavens and new earth seem to be tied to the birth of this new nation, which is
an eternal nation that is populated by descendants that share in eternal life
in a renewed creation---at the intersection of heaven and earth.

Tying the birth of a
nation to the Resurrection of Jesus and the labor and birthing of sons of Zion,
it can be said that yes, as soon as Zion goes into labor---as soon as the
kingdom of heaven begins to be manifest on earth by the power of the Resurrection,
the preaching of the Resurrection, and the power of the preaching of Gospel of
Jesus (He is Lord) and the consequent belief in these things---Zion does indeed
give birth to sons. Those sons are indeed sons of the kingdom of
heaven. Those sons are the manifestation and the revelation of the sons
of God (a name given to the covenant people), brothers in the union of belief
with the risen Christ, for whom the creation has been eagerly awaiting (Romans
8:19).

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Though in the grip of
certain death, deliverance comes to the covenant people. Figuratively,
because of Esther’s actions, the Creator God’s people were resurrected from the
dead. Fitting quite well with the controlling narrative and presentation
of the covenant God’s plan of redemption, as it presents itself throughout
Scripture, this figurative resurrection shares echoes with the story of
Abraham’s call to sacrifice Isaac.

In that story,
Abraham considered Isaac to be dead, but trusted that his God would raise him
because of the promises that had been made to Abraham. Isaac,
figuratively, went through death, and (again) figuratively, was raised from the
dead. Returning then to Esther one reads that “Contrary to expectations,
the Jews gained power over their enemies” (9:1b). Yes, the Creaor God’s
covenant people triumphed, just as they would one day be made to triumph over
the final enemy, that being death, through and because of the Resurrection of
Jesus and their believing union with Him, with belief in the Lordship and
Kingship of Jesus being the mark of the Creator God’s new covenant people and
the way in which they are made to share in His Resurrection, prefiguring and
pointing to their own (and that of the entire creation).

Tying in the title of
this study, one of those people of the covenant, that being Mordecai, is not
only resurrected, but he is exalted, ultimately coming to represent in himself
the complete vindication of the people of the covenant God. As the story
goes, Mordecai is exalted to a royal position, adorned “in purple and white and
royal attire, with a large golden crown and a purple linen mantle” (8:15b),
symbolizing that royalty and its association vindication. Yes, one man
becomes the representative of the Creator God’s chosen people. With his (and his people’s) passing through
persecution and suffering and a figurative death, he comes out on the other
side, effectively crowned as a king, as “Mordecai the Jew was second only to
King Ahasuerus” (10:3a). This was what would eventually come to be be
experienced by Jesus the Christ as well, who would be exalted as King by His
Resurrection, though in submission (second only as He would insist) to the
Father.

Indeed, all that will
be said here of Mordecai would, could, and certainly should invoke thoughts of the
Lord Jesus, who was persecuted, went into death, experienced a Resurrection,
and was shown forth as King. It is said of Mordecai that “He was the
highest-ranking Jew” (10:3a), which is another way in which one could be
justified in thinking of Jesus. It is said of Mordecai that “He was
admired by his numerous relatives” (10:3b), which would also eventually become
true of Jesus following His Resurrection. Of Mordecai, it is said that “He
worked enthusiastically for the good of his people and was an advocate for the
welfare of all his descendants” (10:3c).
This too can most definitely be said of Jesus, the one mediator between
God and man.

Prior to such things
being said of Mordecai, the reader (and the hopeful Jew undergoing persecution
under the heel of an oppressor) learns that “Mordecai was of high rank in the
king’s palace, and word about him was spreading throughout all the
provinces. His influence continued to become greater and greater”
(9:4). As it was for the figuratively resurrected Mordecai, so it was for
the physically resurrected Jesus. Jesus, as it comes to be said of Him,
is given the name above all names and set above all rulers and powers.
The Gospel of His Kingdom (He is Lord) spread throughout all lands and His
influence grew, with that influence, as planned, spreading and growing to this
day.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Now Mordecai went out
from the king’s presence in purple and white and royal attire, with a large
golden crown and a purple linen mantle. – Esther 8:15 (NET)

After all that had
taken place, this was Mordecai’s vindication. Not only that, but this
represented the vindication and deliverance of the covenant people of the
Creator God, as the Jews were saved from the destructive decree that had been
issued by Haman, and unwittingly enforced by the king.

The narrative of
Esther informs the reader that Haman had been exalted and set above all of the
officials of the kingdom of Persia (3:1). “As a result, all of the king’s
servants who were at the king’s gate were bowing and paying homage to Haman,
for the king had so commanded. However, Mordecai did not bow, nor did he
pay homage… When Haman saw that Mordecai was not bowing or paying homage
to him, he was filled with rage” (3:5). Because Mordecai would not bow to
Haman, not only was he enraged at Mordecai, but “Haman sought to destroy all
the Jews (that is, the people who were the kin of Mordecai) who were in all the
kingdom” (3:6b). Here, hatred directed towards Mordecai is converted into
a plan to wipe out the Creator God’s covenant people. In effect, for
Haman, Mordecai stands as the representative for all of the Jews.

So even though a
decree of destruction against all the Jews was set forth, the plan is reported
to have been foiled through the faithful actions of Esther, as she is urged on
her Uncle Mordecai. In a very messiah-like role, she willingly took her
life in her hands and interceded on behalf of the covenant people, so as to
spare their lives. This would have the
added effect of bringing punishment upon all that would present themselves as
enemies to her people. Effectively, prior to her brave intervention
(again, as urged by her uncle), the Jews were as good as dead. The covenant faithfulness of the Creator God
was at stake. “Throughout each and every province where the king’s edict
and law were announced there was considerable mourning among the Jews, along
with fasting, weeping, and sorrow” (4:3a). They knew that they had been
sold into death. Mordecai himself “went out into the city, crying out in
a loud and bitter voice” (4:1b). The reader of the story can almost hear
him crying, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”

Yes, it was as if the
people of Israel had gone down into the very pit of death. Apart from the intervention of their God to
deliver them from certain destruction, there was no hope. But something
happened. Though it is well known that the God of Israel is not mentioned
in the Hebrew version of the book of Esther (though the Creator God is invoked
in the extended, Greek Septuagint version), it is resoundingly clear that their
faithful, covenant God is on their side and working on their behalf, fulfilling
His promises to them. Clearly, the
implication is that intervention is necessary for the covenant people to
continue, and for their God to be vindicated as well.

In their fasting,
weeping, and sorrow, they are clearly humbling themselves and seeking God,
according to God’s promise to Solomon that can be found in the second book of
the Chronicles (7:14). They are under intense persecution and they are in
need of redemption and deliverance. This is the same story that is presented
in the book of Exodus (the foundational narrative for the people that would
identify themselves as a people of exodus), repeatedly in the book of Judges,
and also in the prophetic work of Daniel.